Atmospheric carbon burial in modern lake basins and its significance for the global carbon budget

Abstract

Lake basins (∼2.7×10 6 km 2, about 0.8% of the ocean surface or 2% of the land surface) bury a surprisingly high amount of atmospheric carbon (∼70×10 6 t/a) which reaches more than one fourth of the annual atmospheric carbon burial in the modern oceans. This is mainly accomplished by the rapid accumulation of lacustrine sediments and a very high preservation factor (on average 50 times higher than that in the oceans). Lakes with relatively large drainage areas commonly display the highest carbon accumulation rates. In most cases, burial of organic matter is more important than that of carbonate carbon produced by silicate weathering, in contrast to the oceans where the burial of atmospheric carbonate carbon almost reaches the same amount as that of organic carbon. Exceptions to this rule are closed lake basins in arid to semiarid climate which precipitate a major part of their atmosphere-derived dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) as carbonate. These results are demonstrated in some detail for L. Qinghai, China, (low contribution of atmospheric carbonate carbon) and L. Turkana, East Africa, (high contribution from silicate rocks). Further data are gained by estimates for a number of closed and open lakes. The drainage areas of the lakes withdraw atmospheric carbon at rates of mostly 1–4 g/m 2/a, calculated from the lacustrine carbon burial. Carbon burial rates in lakes commonly increase with change to wetter and warmer climate (partially larger lake surfaces, higher rates of seasonal carbonate precipitation, trend to stratified lake waters with oxygen-deficient bottom water). Anthropogenic influence mostly enhances the production and preservation of organic carbon in lake basins (often by a factor of 3–4). After the last glacial maximum, the joint action of the globally spreading vegetation, peat growth, and carbon burial in lakes would have been able to reduce the atmospheric carbon pool to one third to one half of its present amount within a time period of 1 ka. However, CO 2 exchange between the atmosphere and the ocean has brought about an overall increase in the atmospheric CO 2 during the Holocene. The contribution of lakes and artificial reservoirs in counteracting man-made CO 2 emissions should not be neglected.